WP5: Eclipse Qualification Process Support

Intent

Main Saftey standards (ISO 26262, EN 50128, DO 178C, DO 278A, DO-330, IEC 61508) require tool qualification.
WP5 of Automotive Industrial working group has set itself the goal to work on this topic for Eclipse.
The goal is not to qualify Eclipse but to enable tool developers using Eclispe as a plattform to develop qualifyable plugins.

We have identified the DO-330 as first, domain independant tool qualification standard that satisfies the requirements of
the main safety standards and hence we use the DO-330 as baseline for tool qualification.

We have specified a roadmap to provide an infrastructure that support the develment of qualifyable Eclipse plugins by
gathering all relevant qualification information (from requirements to tests) in the tool qualification model.

Currently we are working step by step to implement the roadmap, starting with the support of the lowest (TQL-5) level and using
qualification support tools from Validas for case studies until the integrated Eclipse tool support is in place.

In WP5.1 we decided to use the DO-330 as basis for qualification of Eclipse-based tools, since
it fits to the ISO 26262 but also to other standards like the DO-178C,..
We are checking especially if the ISO 26262 requires less than DO-330.

We propose to extend the Eclipse plugin mechanism to additional data that contains
all required information for qualification of the plugin.
By building a formal (EMF) model for this data we can automate many steps during
the development and qualification process like: Determination of the tool confidence level,
determination of the qualification state, verification of syntactical consistency and completeness
and generation of requried documents from the requirements specification until the test report with
MC/DC coverage of the code.
Furthermore we create generic documents that ensure the DO-330 compliance of the process
Like "How-To Qualify Eclipse-Based Tools", "Tool Development Plan", "Tool Verification Plan",...

The conecpt is described with in the following three documents (and the model):

We (Validas, BMW-CarIT, Virtual Vehicle) have started a small demonstration of the process.

The demonstration shall develop a transition criteria checker tool for the DO-330 to determine
the qualification state of a tool based on the DO-330 qualification model of the concept.
The plan with functions, milestones etc. can be found at http://wiki.eclipse.org/images/0/08/Demonstrator.pdf

We will synchronize within the WP5 telcos on next steps and report progress (effort & milestones).